Insomniac
by TheVoiceInMyHead
Summary: If I sleep, I wake up screaming. This scares Soda more than the permanent shadows under my eyes.


**A/N: Post book. Pony's way of dealing with losing his friends. The shortest piece I've ever written. Enjoy! :)**

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Insomniac

Sometimes I can't sleep.

The drowsiness just never comes. Sometimes I can lie awake all night without ever closing my eyes.

Soda seems to sleep just fine. He snores away, deep and roaring, lion-like, and sometimes because there's nothing else to do, I count his snores. The other night he snored two hundred and fifty six times. There are times when I envy his ability to sleep just about anywhere, anytime, because insomnia gets kind of tiring. Sometimes I don't. The pictures that play behind my eyelids when I finally do fall asleep scare me something awful. There are fires and screams and gunshots. Dally crumples under a streetlight and Johnny burns.

After I have a dream like this, I don't sleep for a good four days. The purple under my eyes gets deep and bruise-like and Darry worries. I don't know what to say to him, so I don't say anything at all usually. This worries him even more.

Soda worries too, but he just bites his lip and tries not to stare too hard at me. I say nothing to try and comfort him. There's nothing to say. If I tell him why the bags under my eyes have become so permament, he and Darry'll send me to some mental facility. You just can't explain the kind of repetitive nightmares that play like horror movies in my head. But they're worse than horror movies because they're real, they actually happened. Dallas Winston's countless gun wounds and Johnny Cade's raw burns pierce me. I feel like I've been shot a thousand and one times, then burned to a crumbling ash. And then it's morning again and I have to do it all over again. It makes me very tired.

Sometimes, when I can't sleep, I talk to Johnny. Or Dallas. But mostly it's Johnny.

I ask him if he's okay. Say hi to my mom and dad. Tell Dallas I miss him a lot.

I ask him why I can't sleep anymore. Why Darry's getting a permanent worry line across his forehead. Why I'm flunking nearly everything.

Johnny never has any answers. This doesn't bother me cause Johnny's a thinker, that's all. He'll have a good answer soon enough and he'll help me. I'm still waiting for that answer, he's taking an awful long time.

On the rare occasion I talk to Dally, I can't help noticing that he's a lot different now that he's dead. He doesn't say anything anymore. No rude comments, no swearing, nothing. I tell him that I miss him everyday and he says nothing to comfort me. I guess he's trying to toughen me up or something. Or maybe he's just tired of listening. One of these nights, I'll give him the chance to tell me everything about heaven. I hope they're treating them right up there.

Sometimes I talk a little too loud and I wake up Sodapop. I feel bad about it cause he has work early in the morning and he needs his sleep, so I whisper. Johnny likes it better when I talk quiet, anyway.

I don't like not sleeping, but I don't like sleeping either. It's an odd kind of situation. If I get no sleep, my mind wanders to fuzzy places in class and at dinnertime and somehow I fail my next test and Darry ends up yelling. But if I do sleep, the nightmares are ready to eat at my brain the moment I close my eyelids. If I sleep, I wake up screaming. This scares Soda more than the shadows under my eyes. I'm stuck for ideas.

Maybe I should just get really drunk and pass out for a good few days. Unconsciousness is like sleeping, in a way.

But I can't. Darry would kill me.

I guess I'll just go to bed again, like every hopeless night, and pray for some empty, mindless sleep. The kind where there is nothing in your head all night but a black, dense zero. No nightmares, no pictures, no fires, no gunshots. I'll even do the whole charade: pajamas, brush teeth, lights off.

I see no moon tonight as I pull my curtains closed. No stars, no ounce of light illuminates my world. My blanket is cold and I wrap myself in it as I close my eyes and wait. I'm so tired.

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. No hope. No fires. No gunshots. No Dallas crumpling under the streetlight...

I pop open my eyes and see nothing in the darkness of my room. I decide there's no sleeping tonight, it's too dangerous. Sodapop snores loudly. One, two, three, four...

I'm an insomniac. At least I'll finally be able to tell Johnny what's wrong with me.

"Hey Johnny," I whisper, cracking the silence with my hoarse voice. "It's me again."

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